Tooned In: A Pup Named Scooby-Doo – For Letter or Worse (1988)

RIP to Ruth Buzzi, I’ve been a Laugh-In fan since I was six years old, and an ‘80s six year old’er at that. As in, around that time local stations were showing a half-hour version of episodes in syndication. I didn’t understand what they were talking about, of course, but hey, there were silly characters and music, and a girl who got water thrown at her! So it was on par with a lot of kids’ shows I knew about. And of course, Ruth did a good helping of voice acting, on cartoons you could see here and elsewhere.

Onto today’s review, a while back we looked at Hanna-Barbera’s first attempt at those sweet Muppet Babies Saturday Morning ratings when they shrunk The Flintstones down to kids. Now let’s move onto a similar series that’s a bit more fondly remembered. Who were the next characters to be de-aged? Well, it was no kooky mystery, that’s for sure.

Yes, I speak of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, the adventures of Mystery Inc….oops, the Scooby-Doo Detective Agency…when they were boys and girls. And if nothing else, it was more than a few steps above The Flintstone Kids. It helps that this show probably tramples on continuity less, of course, but then there’s the batshit insane direction it took the franchise, with crazy animations, fourth-wall breaking, and a general send-up of the Scooby formula.

I probably don’t have to introduce the gang to you. Scooby-Doo has been kept in the public eye and consciousness to this very day, after all. So let’s jump right into…

FOR LETTER OR WORSE

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the bop of a theme song, and the title card too is brought up with another catchy tune. Both have a doo-wop sound despite the show being from the ‘80s. I guess technically the kids were, well, actual kids in the ‘50s, so it makes sense. Maybe this is the same continuity as the later episodes of Happy Days, where ‘50s pop culture meets ‘80s fashion. But then, we open this episode with the queen mother of background cartoon music. Scoo-BEE, Doo-BEE, DOO…Scoobidy Doo-BEE, Doo-BEE…oh sorry, got lost while under earworm influence.

So in Coolsville, the name given to where the Scooby gang lives (later to become “Crystal Cove” on Mystery Incorporated, and to paraphrase Allen Ludden, if you haven’t watched Mystery Incorporated yet…Why Not?!), we’re at HBTV studios where they suspiciously have the same show with different characters a couple times over. Today, the gang is in the audience for the game show of the same name of the episode. As is usually the case, Shaggy is narrating the intro and makes sure to let us know he’s doing something “…with a pup named Scooby-Doo!” They have a comical picnic spread out on the bleacher, to which Daphne remarks, “It’s a game show, not a cooking show!” Now let’s see who Daphne Blake really is!

(Rips off mask)

Valerie Bertinelli?!!? But why? “Well, Food Network didn’t renew my contract, so I’m going on an online tour telling everyone how much better the channel was when it was just cooking shows and not those ‘game show’ baking championships, which by the way I’d lose like half my profile on the network without, but I conveniently forgot that. And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling Holiday Baking Championship stan!”

(Val gets carried out by the cops)

“…I hope you choke on your pin-ups of Carla Hall and Nancy Fuller!”

Ahem. But I do have to mention who Daphne actually is played by. TIL that she was voiced by Kellie Martin, who was about to become Becca Thatcher on Life Goes On. But more importantly to me, she was also Roddy Piper’s niece in the woefully underrated movie, screw Wrestlecrap forever for saying otherwise, Body Slam. I still got my 1989 recording from HBO somewhere, and I can even tell you what else I had on the same tape: the World Championship Wrestling where Terry Funk interviews “Rick Flaire,” and Wrestling Challenge when the Rockers pissed off the Rougeaus with their new theme where they sing too. WWE Vault, someone, PLEASE unearth that version??? And…

Oh yeah, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Freddy, reimagined as a tabloid-obsessed conspiracy nut, says if he’s chosen as a contestant, he’ll use the opportunity to tell the world that aliens run television. Still makes more sense than…yeah, I try not to go there in my reviews, but if you know you know. And this was the start of Fred generally being depicted as more of a buffoon in future Scooby series. The peak of which was, again, Mystery Incorporated, where his love for traps was further explored, subscription to “Traps Illustrated” magazine included. Oh, just drop everything and binge it NOW. Drop everything after you finish reading this, that is. Anyway, Scooby loses his hot dog and when he chases it, he sees a ghost gangster. After a number of Tex Avery-ish reactions (the norm for this show), he runs back in typical Scooby fear. Daphne explains it away as being a TV studio, so people wear costumes there every day.

Meanwhile, Davey the Letter Guy, the game show host, is with his assistant Prestina, whose magic show was canceled when For Letter or Worse became the FABULOUS, SIXTY MINUTE FOR LETTER OR WORSE! Shot in the dark here, but could she be the ghost? Daphne points out the ring she’s wearing too…hmmmmm….

We then run through a bunch of ‘80s-style game show tropes: promises of contestants “taking dives” (the messy kids’ stunt show), getting the game players to “come on down” from the audience (have your pets spayed and neutered), and of course a show about solving puzzles by picking letters because Vannamania was running wild in 1988, brother. Shaggy and Scooby are chosen as contestants, as are Bobby and Betsy Brainy, snobby nerd twins who were seen earlier making fun of Scooby’s eating habits. They are also known as the Brainy Bunch, a totally original name…

So the object of the game is to fish out letters to include in the puzzle. Turns out that the Brainys don’t need any letters, outdoing the “I’ve got a good feeling about this” girl from Wheel of Fortune when they solve “Antidisestablishmentarianism.” By the last round, Shaggy is shut out by 25,000 plus points, and I’m wondering what Golden Snitch would allow our heroes to show up their rivals. Can’t be as bad as the early days of the current run of Family Feud, where winning the Triple round was all you needed. But before the game has a chance to finish, the lights flicker and the mobster spirit from before returns. And in case you weren’t sure it’s a mobster, he has Edward G. Robinson verbal tics to drive it home. Everyone flees except Daphne, who maintains that she doesn’t believe in ghosts. So Scooby (Joel and the Bots singing voices) tries to kill her, er, get her out of the studio with a forklift.

Outside, we learn that HBTV is going out of business because of this isolated incident, which seems excessive to me. Pop O’Connor, an ex-stagehand, is around to give a backstory of the gangster Al Cabone, a villain so card-carrying, he stomps on flowers. By the way, O’Conner too is wearing a ring. Anyway, the story was, Cabone had a secret vault in the studio, but when he was finally caught, he swore he’d return for its contents one day. Velma takes all this down on her comically sized computer. Shaggy and Scooby, as always, just want to go home and forget the ghost business, but Freddy wants the Scooby-Doo Detective Agency to find Cabone’s ghost for the fame and fortune. And besides that, he adds, “We owe it to the game show audience!” Trust me, they’re not worth the effort. The kids then hear a spooky howl, but it’s the Great Mel, a musician/accordion player/magician who is also wearing a ring. Could A Pup Named Scooby-Doo be nuanced enough to provide numerous red herrings? Well they usually have ONE Red Herring…but more on that later. Of course, the gag is, Mel is so bad, he breaks all the glass when he sings. This includes Velma’s glasses (but she comically just pulls out another pair), and even Scooby himself gets shattered before Velma picks up the pieces and Superfriends Welds him back together.

Mel promises the HBTV exec the ghost will never appear again if he hires him, to no avail. Freddy likewise gets no help from Mel, leaving him to decide that they will investigate. Scooby ups the offer to a truck load of Scooby Snacks for him to go along, and on this series he now has the near-orgasmic reactions (no, really…) that Snuffles, the dog from Quick Draw McGraw, has after he’s fed. Except here, instead of floating on air, he turns into a blimp advertising Scooby Snacks.

Back in the studio, a still bloated Scooby looks for clues with Shaggy and Velma, when the ghost reappears, literally deflating Scoob as the air leaves through his head. Meanwhile, Fred and Daphne find a trail of peanuts leading to a diary, that turns out to be from O’Connor the stagehand. They learn that he once worked in radio but was driven out of business when TV took over. There’s a cave nearby, and Velma whips out a comically-sized searchlight to reveal that it’s a secret tunnel to the studio that the ghost may have used. On cue, Cabone’s ghost reappears and we get a brief musical interlude chase.

Regrouping, the gang goes through all the suspects. And Freddy includes his other defining quality of the series when he says it has to be…Red Herring, the show’s bully. Daphne, protests, because after all, she says, he’s not even in this episode. So all that waiting, and I get an episode with no Red Herring? THAT’S NOT VERY FUNNY! Velma, however, says everyone (minus Freddy) are right, and she has a plan. The plan is to recreate For Letter or Worse, where Scooby solves the puzzle: “Prestina Is The Ghost” and the ghost, who is indeed the displaced magic host, gets dumped in the lake. But wait! The stagehand? The Great Mel? It turned out they were all characters she created! They don’t mention it, but Mel being a magician was a missed clue here. And of course she would have gotten away with it…and the kids get to finish the catchphrase for her.

And we get to finish the game show itself…where the Brainys are so nerdy, they don’t recognize a five-letter word with two Z’s, which of course Shaggy and Scooby easily get : pizza. And you just know that if this was the actual Wheel of Fortune, the judges would not accept Scooby’s pronunciation of “Rizza” and it would go viral on clickbait sites as such. And the word is 30,003 points, so Shag and Scoob win and the twins take a dive. Scooby-Dooby-Doo!

This episode is what A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is known for: being totally over the top and goofy. You either appreciate that or are annoyed by it.

Ah, but if you thought Hanna-Barbera was done trying to glom off the Muppet Babies, YO, er, you would be sadly mistaken. Onto the ’90s we go…